Born in London 1748, he was a child
prodigy, the child of a prosperous attorney. He began to study Latin at
the age of three, and was sent to Queen's College Oxford at age 12 to
study law.

Bentham, however, soon became disillusioned with the law, and spent his
life criticizing the existing law and suggesting ways for its improvement.
His father's death in 1792 left him financially independent, and for
nearly forty years he lived quietly in Westminster, producing between ten
and twenty pages of manuscript a day, even when he was in his eighties.

Bentham is remembered as the father of
Utilitarianism, promoting `the greatest happiness of the greatest number'.
Based on this doctrine, he was an outspoken advocate of law reform, and
wrote about issues ranging from prison reform, religion, poor relief,
international law, and animal welfare to universal suffrage and the
decriminalisation of homosexuality.

The Auto-Icon

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/info/jb.htm

The cabinet contains Bentham's
preserved skeleton, dressed in his own clothes, and surmounted by a wax
head. Bentham requested that his body be preserved in this way in his will
made shortly before his death on 6 June 1832.

This peculiar relic has given rise to numerous legends and anecdotes. One
of the most commonly recounted is that the Auto-Icon regularly attends
meetings of the College Council, and that it is solemnly wheeled into the
Council Room to take its place among the present-day members. Its
presence, it is claimed, is always recorded in the minutes with the words
Jeremy Bentham - present but not voting...

Bentham originally intended that his head should be part of the Auto-Icon,
and for ten years before his death (so runs another story) carried around
in his pocket the glass eyes which were to adorn it. Unfortunately when
the time came to preserve it for posterity, the process went disastrously
wrong, robbing the head of most of its facial expression, and leaving it
decidedly unattractive. The wax head was therefore substituted, and for
some years the real head, with its glass eyes, reposed on the floor of the
Auto-Icon, between Bentham's legs. However, it proved an irresistible
target for students, especially from King's College London... The last
straw (so runs yet another story) came when it was discovered in the front
quadrangle being used for football practice. Thereafter it was removed to
the College vaults, where it remains to this day.

Nature has placed mankind under the
governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them
alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we
shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other
the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern
us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make
to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.
In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will
remain. subject to it all the while.

I. Pleasures then, and the avoidance
of pains, are the ends that the legislator has in view; it behoves him
therefore to understand their value. Pleasures and pains are the
instruments he has to work with: it behoves him therefore to understand
their force, which is again, in other words, their value.

II. To a person considered by himself,
the value of a pleasure or pain considered by itself, will be greater or
less, according to the four following circumstances:

Its intensity.

Its duration.

Its certainty or uncertainty.

Its propinquity or remoteness.

III. These are the circumstances which
are to be considered in estimating a pleasure or a pain considered each of
them by itself. But when the value of any pleasure or pain is considered
for the purpose of estimating the tendency of any act by which it is
produced, there are two other circumstances to be taken into the account;
these are,

5. Its fecundity, or the chance it has of being
followed by sensations of the same kind: that is, pleasures, if it be a
pleasure: pains, if it be a pain.

6. Its purity, or the chance it has of not being
followed by sensations of the opposite kind: that is, pains, if it be a
pleasure: pleasures, if it be a pain.

These two last, however, are in
strictness scarcely to be deemed properties of the pleasure or the pain
itself; they are not, therefore, in strictness to be taken into the
account of the value of that pleasure or that pain. They are in strictness
to be deemed properties only of the act, or other event, by which such
pleasure or pain has been produced; and accordingly are only to be taken
into the account of the tendency of such act or such event.

IV. To a number of persons, with
reference to each of whom to the value of a pleasure or a pain is
considered, it will be greater or less, according to seven circumstances:
to wit, the six preceding ones; viz.

Its intensity.

Its duration.

Its certainty or uncertainty.

Its propinquity or remoteness.

Its fecundity.

Its purity.

And one other; to wit:

7. Its extent; that is, the number of
persons to whom it extends; or (in other words) who are affected by it.

V. To take an exact account then of
the general tendency of any act, by which the interests of a community are
affected, proceed as follows. Begin with any one person of those whose
interests seem most immediately to be affected by it: and take an account,

Of the value of each distinguishable
pleasure which appears to be produced by it in the first instance.

Of the value of each pain which
appears to be produced by it in the first instance.

Of the value of each pleasure which
appears to be produced by it after the first. This constitutes the
fecundity of the first pleasure and the impurity of the first pain.

Of the value of each pain which
appears to be produced by it after the first. This constitutes the
fecundity of the first pain, and the impurity of the first pleasure.

Sum up all the values of all the
pleasures on the one side, and those of all the pains on the other. The
balance, if it be on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency
of the act upon the whole, with respect to the interests of that
individual person; if on the side of pain, the bad tendency of it upon
the whole.

Take an account of the number of
persons whose interests appear to be concerned; and repeat the above
process with respect to each. Sum up the numbers expressive of the
degrees of good tendency, which the act has, with respect to each
individual, in regard to whom the tendency of it is good upon the whole:
. . .

It is not to be expected that this
process should be strictly pursued previously to every moral judgment, or
to every legislative or judicial operation. It may, however, be always
kept in view: and as near as the process actually pursued on these
occasions approaches to it, so near will such process approach to the
character of an exact one.

* * *

Other utilitarian principles:

In political terms, "greatest good for
the greatest number" requires:

oUniversal suffrage

oOne person-one vote

oFreedom of speech and press

And, in later works of J.S. Mill

oPublic education

The Principles of Political Economy

by John Stuart Mill

Book II

DISTRIBUTION

Chapter I

Of Property

p. 5

1. The principles which have been
set forth in the first part of this treatise, are, in certain respects,
strongly distinguished from those on the consideration of which we are now
about to enter. The laws and conditions of the Production of wealth
partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or
arbitrary in them. Whatever mankind produce, must be produced in the
modes, and under the conditions, imposed by the constitution of external
things, and by the inherent properties of their own bodily and mental
structure.

It is not so with the Distribution
of wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once
there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they
like... The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and
customs of society. The rules by which it is determined, are what the
opinions and feelings of the ruling portion of the community make them,
and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still
more different, if mankind so chose.

II.1.2

The opinions and feelings of
mankind, doubtless, are not a matter of chance. They are consequences of
the fundamental laws of human nature, combined with the existing state of
knowledge and experience, and the existing condition of social
institutions and intellectual and moral culture.

2. Private property, as an
institution, did not owe its origin to any of those considerations of
utility, which plead for the maintenance of it when established. Enough is
known of rude ages, both from history and from analogous states of society
in our own time, to show that tribunals (which always precede laws) were
originally established, not to determine rights, but to repress violence
and terminate quarrels. With this object chiefly in view, they naturally
enough gave legal effect to first occupancy, by treating as the aggressor
the person who first commenced violence, by turning, or attempting to
turn, another out of possession. The preservation of the peace, which was
the original object of civil government, was thus attained: while by
confirming, to those who already possessed it, even what was not the fruit
of personal exertion, a guarantee was incidentally given to them and
others that they would be protected in what was so.

II.1.5

The assailants of the principle of
individual property may be divided into two classes: those whose scheme
implies absolute equality in the distribution of the physical means of
life and enjoyment, and those who admit inequality, but grounded on some
principle, or supposed principle, of justice or general expediency, and
not, like so many of the existing social inequalities, dependent on
accident alone. At the head of the first class, as the earliest of those
belonging to the present generation, must be placed Mr. Owen and his
followers. M. Louis Blanc and M. Cabet have more recently become
conspicuous as apostles of similar doctrines... The characteristic
name for this economical system is Communism, a word of continental
origin, only of late introduced into this country. The word Socialism,
which originated among the English Communists, and was assumed by them as
a name to designate their own doctrine, is now [1849], on the Continent,
employed in a larger sense; not necessarily implying Communism, or the
entire abolition of private property, but applied to any system which
requires that the land and the instruments of production should be the
property, not of individuals, but of communities or associations, or of
the government. Among such systems, the two of highest intellectual
pretension are those which, from the names of their real or reputed
authors, have been called St. Simonism and Fourierism; the former defunct
as a system, but which during the few years of its public promulgation,
sowed the seeds of nearly all the Socialist tendencies which have since
spread so widely in France: the second, still flourishing in the number,
talent, and zeal of its adherents.

II.1.9

3. Whatever may be the merits or
defects of these various schemes, they cannot be truly said to be
impracticable. No reasonable person can doubt that a village community,
composed of a few thousand inhabitants cultivating in joint ownership the
same extent of land which at present feeds that number of people, and
producing by combined labour and the most improved processes the
manufactured articles which they required, could raise an amount of
productions sufficient to maintain them in comfort; and would find the
means of obtaining, and if need be, exacting, the quantity of labour
necessary for this purpose, from every member of the association who was
capable of work.

II.1.10

The objection ordinarily made to a
system of community of property and equal distribution of the produce,
that each person would be incessantly occupied in evading his fair share
of the work, points, undoubtedly, to a real difficulty. But those who urge
this objection, forget to how great an extent the same difficulty exists
under the system on which nine-tenths of the business of society is now
conducted… If Communistic labour might be less vigorous than that of a
peasant proprietor, or a workman labouring on his own account, it would
probably be more energetic than that of a labourer for hire, who has no
personal interest in the matter at all…

II.1.11

A contest, who can do most for the
common good, is not the kind of competition which Socialists repudiate. To
what extent, therefore, the energy of labour would be diminished by
Communism, or whether in the long run it would be diminished at all, must
be considered for the present an undecided question.

II.1.12

Another of the objections to
Communism is similar to that so often urged against poor laws: that if
every member of the community were assured of subsistence for himself and
any number of children, on the sole condition of willingness to work,
prudential restraint on the multiplication of mankind would be at an end,
and population would start forward at a rate which would reduce the
community, through successive stages of increasing discomfort, to actual
starvation… But Communism is precisely the state of things in which
opinion might be expected to declare itself with greatest intensity
against this kind of selfish intemperance…

II.1.13

A more real difficulty is that of
fairly apportioning the labour of the community among its members. There
are many kinds of work, and by what standard are they to be measured one
against another? Who is to judge how much cotton spinning, or distributing
goods from the stores, or bricklaying, or chimney sweeping, is equivalent
to so much ploughing? The difficulty of making the adjustment between
different qualities of labour is so strongly felt by Communist writers,
that they have usually thought it necessary to provide that all should
work by turns at every description of useful labour: an arrangement which,
by putting an end to the division of employments, would sacrifice so much
of the advantage of co-operative production as greatly to diminish the
productiveness of labour…

II.1.14

If, therefore, the choice were to
be made between Communism with all its chances, and the present [1852]
state of society with all its sufferings and injustices; if the
institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a
consequence, that the produce of labour should be apportioned as we now
see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labour—the largest portions to
those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work
is almost nominal, and so in a descending scale, the remuneration
dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most
fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on
being able to earn even the necessaries of life; if this or Communism were
the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of Communism would
be but as dust in the balance. But to make the comparison applicable, we
must compare Communism at its best, with the régime of individual
property, not as it is, but as it might be made… That all should indeed
start on perfectly equal terms, is inconsistent with any law of private
property: but if as much pains as has been taken to aggravate the
inequality of chances arising from the natural working of the principle,
had been taken to temper that inequality by every means not subversive of
the principle itself; if the tendency of legislation had been to favour
the diffusion, instead of the concentration of wealth—to encourage the
subdivision of the large masses, instead of striving to keep them
together; the principle of individual property would have been found to
have no necessary connexion with the physical and social evils which
almost all Socialist writers assume to be inseparable from it…

II.1.16

To judge of the final destination
of the institution of property, we must suppose everything rectified,
which causes the institution to work in a manner opposed to that equitable
principle, of proportion between remuneration and exertion, on which in
every vindication of it that will bear the light, it is assumed to be
grounded. We must also suppose two conditions realized, without which
neither Communism nor any other laws or institutions could make the
condition of the mass of mankind other than degraded and miserable. One of
these conditions is universal education; the other, a due limitation of
the numbers of the community. With these there could be no poverty, even
under the present social institutions: and these being supposed, the
question of Socialism is not, as generally stated by Socialists, a
question of flying to the sole refuge against the evils which now bear
down humanity; but a mere question of comparative advantages, which
futurity must determine. We are too ignorant either of what individual
agency in its best form, or Socialism in its best form, can accomplish, to
be qualified to decide which of the two will be the ultimate form of human
society.

II.1.17

If a conjecture may be hazarded,
the decision will probably depend mainly on one consideration, viz. which
of the two systems is consistent with the greatest amount of human liberty
and spontaneity. After the means of subsistence are assured, the next in
strength of the personal wants of human beings is liberty; and (unlike the
physical wants, which as civilization advances become more moderate and
more amenable to control) it increases instead of diminishing in
intensity, as the intelligence and the moral faculties are more developed…
It remains to be discovered how far the preservation of this
characteristic would be found compatible with the Communistic organization
of society. No doubt, this, like all the other objections to the Socialist
schemes, is vastly exaggerated… The question is, whether there would be
any asylum left for individuality of character; whether public opinion
would not be a tyrannical yoke; whether the absolute dependence of each on
all, and surveillance of each by all, would not grind all down into a tame
uniformity of thoughts, feelings, and actions.